Choosing imagery: the questions we get asked most

The version of this that works is simpler than the version most people imagine. The questions about choosing imagery that come up most often on our calls.

Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

Do we need to care about this?

Generic stock photography actively lowers trust. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding.

How do we know it is working?

Every image should earn the bytes it costs. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

The short version

Design decisions are the ones clients feel most confident arguing about, which makes it worth separating taste from evidence early. Three things worth confirming about choosing imagery before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Real photos of real work beat polished irrelevance — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.